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Mini-review: 5 Minute Home Workouts

It's what most of us probably want - fit, toned body without having to allocate time and finances to sessions down the gym. And this Windows Phone application claims to help you achieve just that, with sessions as short as five minutes, as the title suggests. Does it work? Well so far, so good, though ask me again in a few months to see the real results!

Don't have the time or the will power to workout? Then try this app. All sessions have timed rest and exercise periods to ensure workouts take no more than 5 minutes - even the busiest people should be able to find 5 minutes a day to exercise!

The easy way to the body you want.

I took this freemium application for a spin under the guise of 'get Mr AAWP geek fit with minimal time and expense'!

The colourful opening set of seven different themed workouts, depending on how you'd like to focus your fitness efforts. There's no 'aerobic' option, so I went for 'fat loss'. Note the virtual controls in these screenshots, though 5 Minute Home Workouts is well programmed and these can be dismissed on compatible phones, to give greater screen real estate; (right) the small print, though pretty helpful, so worth a read!

In addition to the seven sets of basic exercises (which should be enough for most casual users), there are advanced packs, each £1.50 in the UK Store, giving specific extra exercises to help achieve a goal; (right) in addition, there are extra features, including being able to workout to music - the application takes over your phone's sound system in order to be able to give audio signals, so you also need the app to handle music.

Two of the typical exercises, with very simple animations to show what to do...

There's a brief rest phase after each set of repetitions, counted down by the application - and the facility for you to enter how many you did in the time allotted (and analyse progress later in the optional Results module); (right) in one of the other sets, one of the more extreme poses - if I could do THIS then I probably wouldn't need the app.... just saying!

Very neatly done. Just polished enough to do the job, without overdoing it, just capable enough for free use while providing enough incentive for keen users to use the various in-app-purchases. Recommended. You can grab 5 Minute Home Workouts here in the Store.